The Boy Without the Eyebrows
by howlsatthemoon
Summary: Because no one regrows eyebrows quite like her. / Sequel to The Girl with the Lion Hair. Seamus/Lavender.


_Disclaimer: I don't own anything._

So while I was gone, I could do nothing but think about new pairings.

And since I'm addicted to love triangles, here's a sort of sequel to The Girl with the Lion Hair. It starts out during seventh year. I kind of love/hate the ending. It was originally an unhappy ending (I included it as the alternative ending) but I really fell in love with Seamus/Lavender, more so than Dean/Lavender, and I _had_ to have them together. Tell me which you like better.

_Listen to: _Breathe (2 AM) by Anna Nalick

-;-

the boy without the eyebrows

_you got a smile so bright  
__you know you could've been a candle_

(The Temptations.)

So Dean gets the girl.

And Seamus gets his eyebrows scorched off.

(He's really sick of it ending like that.)

x

He brews the potion recklessly, his mind elsewhere and his eyes in space. His rough hair sticks up, uncombed; his face is blank, dead, lonely.

And then she sits down next to him and it seems like that thing they say… what's it called again? (Meant to be.)

"Where's Dean?" Lavender asks instantly, her mind-of-its-own hair tied up in a tight bun, a single curl loose, framing her face. "I haven't seen him."

He looks at her nonchalantly, Lavender, with her round face and button nose and starstruck ocean eyes. (Since when was she pretty?) "'is mam wouldn't let 'im come to Hogwarts," he says, voice thick. "Guess it's just me this year, eh?"

She gives him a smile that makes his hands shake. "It's alright, Seamus. I'm here, aren't I?" She flashes a grin and pats his hand. "I'll see you around, then?"

Her face disappears behind a cloud of smoke and rotten smell and heat. When it all clears up again, she is there with her eyebrows turned down and mouth frowning and Slughorn at his desk, shaking his head disapprovingly. He gets that familiar feeling on his forehead that indicates his eyebrows are gone.

"Oh, no," Lavender sighs prettily, stifling a giggle. "Here, Seamus, let me," she says softly when his hands begin to reach up for the empty space, and she mutters an incantation and his forehead's itchy, but when he feels, his eyebrows are back. "Bye, Seamus," she sings, touching his shoulder once as he stares after her in awe.

(No one's ever grown back his eyebrows for him.)

x

They're sitting together on the Common Room sofa one day, doing homework, when Parvati Patil walks in with her flavor of the week. As she kisses him goodbye and then plops down in-between them, pink-faced and smiling. "Ravenclaws, now, are you?" she asks, grinning at Lavender and winking at Seamus.

"It's just _homework, _Parvati," Lavender giggles, rolling her eyes. "Or do you not remember what that is?"

"Oh, please. Homework, schmomework. Why don't you go out and _do_ anything anymore, Lav? Since the start of seventh year you've been _such_ a killjoy. All you do is homework, homework, homework. You're the bloody new Hermione Granger, for God's sakes." And then her eyes turn to Seamus, gleaming wickedly. "And _you_. What? Is Dean your life, now? Come on, Finnigan, you've got to go out and do something! That's it. You, me, Hogsmeade weekend tomorrow. Meet me in the Great Hall at breakfast." And with that, Parvati flees, laughing, dark hair flying behind her.

"I think I've got me something to do, then," Seamus mutters, his face quizzical. "Is she always that mad?"

"She's Parvati," Lavender sighs, avoiding his eyes. "So, yes, she pretty much is. Be careful. She's wild. Don't drink anything she gives you. She finds a way to put Firewhiskey in everything."

Seamus chuckles, putting his quill down on top of his paper, resulting in him knocking over the ink well. He immediately sets to rescuing their homework while Lavender giggles and pulls out her wand.

"_Evanesco_. You know, I've never known anyone who's so prone to accidents," she admits, sitting back down next to Seamus, watching as more Gryffindors enter the common room.

"It's an acquired talent," Seamus teases sheepishly, reaching down for the ink well on the floor at the same time Lavender had been. Their hands intertwine unintentionally, and both of them turn bright red and silent. It's very cheesy and corny as his hands feel like they've been shocked. And then Seamus coughs and she pulls away, looking at her socks.

"It's gotten late," she mumbles, still pink. "I - I'm going up to bed. I'll see you tomorrow, Seamus?"

He nods. "Yeah," he breathes, and watches her leave.

(He's never been so thankful for clumsiness.)

x

So he meets Parvati at the entrance of the Great Hall and does it all right; slips his arm around her waist, makes her laugh, makes her blush. (But this is _Parvati Patil_, and she knows when a boy's got something else on his mind.)

She says it bluntly at The Three Broomsticks, just after the waitress sets down their Butterbeers in front of them. "You've got a thing for Lavender, don't you, Finnigan?" she accuses just as he takes a sip, and he feels like he's just self-combusted.

He spits the liquid all over the floor. Parvati rolls her eyes. "_What the bloody hell are you talking about?_" he splutters and curses and raises his eyebrows all very convincingly (he's always been good at pretending.)

"Do you think I'm blind or something? Lav is my best friend. I _know_ her." (She's always been good at reading between the lines.)

So he gives up, just like that. His face flushes and he stops breathing and he stares at the floor as he asks, "How'd you figure it out?"

Parvati beams and smiles like a child with candy. "Puh-lease. I see the way you look at her. And remember the Yule Ball, when you took her? She was babbling on about you all night afterwards." She nods when he looks at her doubtfully. "You should take her on a date. God knows she needs a fun night after everything."

"_Dean_," he barely manages to choke out. "He's my best mate and he's got feelings for her."

"Dean's not here right now," Parvati murmurs, and then leaves him sitting there to join other friends sitting at a booth. He looks lonely, only a half-full glass of Butterbeer to keep him company.

x

"How'd the date go?" she asks softly when she finds him in the common room that night.

He can't look at her. "It went alright," he whispers back. "I don't think we'll be going on any more, though."

"That's a pity," Lavender sighs, "I thought Parvati really liked you. You know, Seamus, I don't get you. I bet that any girl in Hogwarts would love to have you, but I never see you with anybody. Do you like anybody?"

"One girl," he says, because it's the cliché of clichés, "but she'll never feel the same way."

Lavender gives him this look of pity and he's never wanted to hate her but at that moment he really, really wants to. "She's mad," she insists, eyes full of wonder, and he can only laugh and walk away.

x

At Christmastime, he is standing in the hallway when Padma Patil stops beside him for a split second. He looks up at the same time she does and spots the gleam of mistletoe atop a portrait, and in seconds his arms are wrapped around her, her dark skin entangling with his pale skin. She tastes of spices and pumpkin juice (and he can't help but picture blonde hair.)

She pulls away first and wipes her mouth, blushing darkly. "I'm not my sister, in case you thought I was," she admits, "and no one can ever know about this. I have a reputation to uphold."

"Whatever," he mumbles, and she walks away, hips swaying and hair flowing.

(He feels very pathetic to not have liked it. ((Because honestly, Padma Patil is a very good kisser.)))

x

He gets detention one night for being an idiot, and the horrified faces of his classmates and fellow Gryffindors as he walks out of the portrait hole and to the classroom. (But none can compare to his own face as he enters.)

Lavender stands in front of him, shaking, tears pouring down her face as Amycus Carrow tells classmates to hurt classmates, children to torture children. "I can't do this," she sobs to him, her wand dangling by her waist. "Seamus, I'm not doing this to you."

Alecto Carrow begins to slink toward them. "They'll hurt you if you don't," Seamus whispers loudly. "Just do it, Lav, I can take it. Just do it."

She shakes her head profusely, shuddering. "No, please, don't make me," she cries, and his insides feels as if they've been kicked out. "Seamus…" He jerks his head and closes his eyes, shoving his hands into fists.

"Just _do_ it."

"_Cruciatus," _she whispers feebly.

"Do it _harder_," Seamus demands, tears bubbling in his eyes. "_Please_, Lavender. Be _angry_, for once!"

"_Cruciatus_!" she screams, and pain explodes in his body, white light appearing behind his eyelids, knives piercing everywhere, a banshee screeching in his ear, painpainpain for several seconds before he falls to the ground, limp. (However, he doesn't make a single noise, he's told.)

As Alecto passes by, he hisses, "Very good." Lavender waits, nearly falling to the ground as the man leaves them, before collapsing beside him and gathering him in her arms, her tears dripping off her chin and onto his gold and yellow tie.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she babbles, tears like rain, eyes like thunder. "I'm so sorry."

"It's alright," he says back weakly, and she falls silent for a second before sniffling again as she presses her face into his chest. (Is this love?)

x

He's had a little (a lot) too much firewhiskey one night as he stumbles into the common room with friends he barely remembers, the lights suddenly too bright and the air too tight. Lavender is sitting on the sofa, waiting for him (because she always is.)

"Seamus, are you alright?" she inquires, and then she gives little, "Oof!" as he falls into her arms, pink-faced and intoxicated. "You're - You're not… drunk?"

He grins. "Dean never does this to you, eh?"

She looks down at him and frowns, pulling both of them to the sofa, his head in her lap. "Why are you always bringing up Dean?" she breathes. "Dean's not here right now."

Her face is staring down at him, worried. Something like breathtaking is what comes into his mind. "I heard that before," he slurs, mind dizzy. "But I didn't want to believe it, you know."

And then she kisses him.

(It's something like heaven in hell.)

x

Dean asks where she is. He tells him, because he was there when Dean wasn't and this makes it alright.

She hugs him tightly, her eyes meeting his for a second before tearing her gaze away.

(He feels sick.)

x

Dean is by her side every day, every second, for ever and ever. It's the other way around, now. (Where's Seamus? There's Dean.)

But he can't face her, because he knows that if it's both of them in that room when she wakes up (because she's Gryffindor through and through, and she's going to make it) her eyes will drift to Dean first and he will be forgotten once again.

x

She wakes up and Dean kisses her. Her eyes are closed and don't find his stare, but he feels queasy anyway as he whispers fake encouragement, Parvati's fingers wrapping around his sadly.

x

They break up the next week (it went something like _Where were you?_)

She appears at his doorstep as midnight comes (like the cliché of clichés (('cause that's what they are))). "Where've you been, Seamus?" she murmurs, and he steps closer and pulls her into him. She smells like bravery.

"I've been here," he whispers back as he lifts her up, her legs wrapping around his waist, "I've always been here. I'll always be here."

And her hand slips into his and it's something different, something beautiful. (Something like meant to be.)

x

She grows back his eyebrows for him every time.

(He likes the way it ends now.)

x

**alternative ending  
**(_takes place after Dean kisses Lavender when she wakes)_

He watches as she falls for the guy who comes back (instead of the one who never left.) And for a second there, he thinks maybe she'll look over her shoulder and see him, but she walks away without ever turning back.

He pretends like he doesn't care (don't they all?) It always ends, anyway.


End file.
